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— Christopher Schuetze

There’s an earnest elephant on 14th Street, a flock of foreboding blackbirds on Canal, and ogling eyes all over Chambers.

They are a few of the mosaics, sculptures and figures that distinguish New York City’s 468 stations.

The MTA’s Arts for Transit program has brought in artists to brighten up the public transit system’s underground hubs since the 1980s. Lower Manhattan is home to some of the most unique pieces in the citywide subway collection. From the whimsical, bronze figurines in the 14th Street station to the stop motion movie in the tunnel to Manhattan, the works bring color to the stations’ tiled walls. Here are a few of the best works from the subterranean collection.

– Simone Sebastian

The big MTA news of the day is that hundreds of station agents will be turning in their badges and keys very soon. WPIX/CW 11 says 478 agents will be let go and that the MTA will save $21 million a year. The Daily News goes up close and personal with a laid-off station agent.

SILive.com has a story on Brooklyn/Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon who is asking the MTA to use Recovery Act money to stave off budget cuts.

NBC New York says that MTA workers are brining in thousands of dollars of overtime pay.

It might strike you as a surprise, but there’s a fashionable, colorful, aesthetic side to the tracks. Thanks to the fabulous New Yorkers.  Click on the image to view slideshow

— Dana Rapoport

— Some persistent reporters got to the heart of what motivated t-shirt vendor Lance Orton to report the smoking car in Times Square last week.

Turns out we can thank the MTA.

“See something, say somthing,” a media-weary Ortiz mumbled, as he escaped the horde in a taxi Monday. Check out the Wall Street Journal‘s video:

— Gothamist says the Pace University student who carried cyanide into the subway tunnels last week has been formerly charged with trespassing and will receive a psychiatric evaluation. Subway workers feared he was a terrorist. But news reports say it was a suicide attempt.

— The 37-year-old Staten Island Railway cars are among the many capital projects that got the axe in the MTA budget cuts, SILive.com reports. The cars have a lifespan of 40 years, but the MTA noted that those cars recently received $11 million in maintenance work.

— HollabackNYC, the group that combats sexual harrassment on streets and public transit, is raising money to create an iPhone application. The app would allow users to snap pictures of their harassers and instantly send them along with time and location information to a central database. Check out last month’s video piece on public transit harassment. For more info on the app, check out this video report for the New York City News Service.

Sad news for the subways agents yesterday. They knew it was coming, but getting a pink slip is a whole different story for 500 MTA workers, amNY reports.

The Subway Art Blog posted a unique subway ad. This one is of stickers in the same style that include bits of commentary – some on a more political flavor.

As noted in a previous post, this week saw the first two MTA worker deaths in since 2007.  The Times ran an interesting piece on the dead-man’s switch that prevented the G train from going out of control when its motorman suffered a heart attack.

Also, news of a revised Capital Project plan, one that is two billion dollars lighter, is making the rounds.  Governor Paterson had vetoed the previous plan because of budget shortfalls.

We are hosting Tom Sibley, the father of subwaydouchery.com, and the subject of todays nyctracks.com video, on our podcast tomorrow.  Be sure to check out the interview at 3:00PM.

Brooklyn comedian Tom Sibley talks to NYCTracks.com about his popular, but controversial, blog Subway Douchery.

The site exposes riders who violate the subway courtesy code. Sibley’s iPhone has captured people clipping their toenails, dropping food on the train floor, and even lounging shoeless across the train benches.

For many New Yorkers, it has become an outlet for their public transit frustrations. But some take issue with the site, calling it an invasion of subway riders’ privacy.

State legislators in Albany are now over a month late passing the 2011 budget. While the Assembly continues kicking the fiscal can week after week, state agencies are left waiting to see how big the cuts will be.

For the MTA, budget numbers keep coming in worse. This week the agency reported an additional $72 million shortfall as tax revenues it had been counting on came in below expectations. This is on top of the $450 million already projected.

Riders in the city will soon begin to see the effects. Train lines will disappear, rides will take longer and be more crowded, and a fare hike could be coming soon. While city riders are being told to expect less for more, the city and state, say transit advocates, can’t afford a crippled transit system.

“The city is going to lose employment. It happened in the 70s and early 80s; it can happen again,” said Robert Paaswell, director of the University Transportation Research Center at the City College of New York. “By starving the MTA we’re really starving New York City.”

New York City provides state coffers with more than half of its net revenue. With the state’s budget security so tied to the city’s economy, anything that could make it harder for workers—like a poorly operated public transit system—could have a ripple effect.

“The fundamental issue is that the MTA needs long-term committed sources for capital,” Paaswell said. “The problem is that the legislature is so afraid of the tax word.” He favored a number of possible taxes, including a gasoline tax and tolling on the West Side Highway.

“The only reason New York is what it is today is because of our transit system,” said Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s executive director Kate Slevin. She said that the economic rebound from the 1970s and 80s was tied to the investment in the city’s transit system. Defunding now, she said, would have a negative future effect.

Elected officials in Albany, however, have few encouraging words for those hoping for a funding reversal.

“The state is doing what it can to get additional funds to the MTA. Generally speaking what it can do for the MTA it has done,” said Graham Parker, a spokesperson with state senator Martin Malavé Dilan of Brooklyn. Senator Dilan chairs the Senate’s transportation committee.

“People are used to is how this authority has been operating for the past several decades,” he said. “I can understand how in the long view they can’t foresee it working differently.”

Yet that’s exactly what Dilan and other state elected officials appear to be telling the MTA, and the riders it serves, to expect.

— Colby Hamilton

The golden key–a master key that The Daily News discovered opened hundreds of subway station doors also operates elevators, The Daily News recently discovered.

NYConvergence says the MTA and several cellphone carriers have paired together to bring WiFi to Grand Central Station.

The MTA has witnessed its first deaths of transit workers since 2007. The New York Post reports that worker James Knell slipped onto a third rail in Queens and that a motorman on the G train died while operating the train.

The Gothamist reports that some Brooklyn residents will have to deal with construction noises until March 2011–all because of a 250 foot passageway.

High tech work boots for IT workers? That’s what’s causing some criticism about the MTA’s spending habits. amNew York has more.

The Huffington Post explains why City Council Speaker Christine Quinn made a trip to the nation’s capitol–it involves the 7 train extension.

The Daily News says that the city will spend $46 million in the next year alone on the 7 train extension.